Computational neurobiologist Na Sun appointed as Whitehead Institute’s first AI Fellow

Whitehead Institute has appointed Na Sun, a 2024 PhD graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as the inaugural AI Fellow within the Whitehead Fellows Program.
 
The Whitehead Fellows Program provides highly talented and accomplished recent PhDs and MDs the opportunity to launch their own research programs, instead of working as postdoctoral researchers in a senior scientist’s lab. Since its founding in 1984, the Program has become the model for advancing the careers of biomedical research’s most promising young scientists. Its alumni have gone on to stellar research careers and major leadership roles in research, academia, and industry.
 
The AI Fellowship was established through the recently created Whitehead Innovation Initiative, which was underwritten by a $10 million philanthropic commitment by Michael and Victoria Chambers. “I believe that the creation of this Fellowship and, in particular, the deep skill set that Na Sun brings to Whitehead Institute will spark important new research approaches and substantially broaden the potential for scientific discovery,” said Michael Chambers, who is a member of the Whitehead Institute board of directors.

“This appointment is significant in many ways,” says Whitehead Institute director and president Ruth Lehmann, who is also a professor of Biology at MIT. “Not only will Na be pursuing novel studies in her lab, she will offer new kinds of knowledge and technical skills from which our principal investigators and staff scientists can draw inspiration and drive their studies forward in new, more powerful ways.”
 
Sun earned an S.B. in Life Science at Linyi University in 2009, then completed an S.M. in Bioinformatics and Developmental Biology at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013. She conducted her master’s research in the lab of  Jing-Dong Han, and continued as a Research Associate in the Han lab until 2016. There, she developed a model for better understanding the effects of gene expression patterns on neuronal differentiation, and identified networks of transcription factors regulating gene expression in the human brain.
 
In 2017, Sun came to Cambridge to work as a Bioinformatics Specialist at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. In that work, she integrated an array of experimental data types to create methods for investigating epigenetic regulation to explore immune cell lineage specification and differentiation. In 2020, Sun embarked on graduate studies on computational biology at MIT and earned a PhD in Computer Science earlier this year.
 
Her doctoral research used advanced computational techniques to investigate the cellular heterogeneity of brain vasculature and immune cells and cell-cell communications, with a focus on the molecular mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s disease. In particular, she looked at cell-cell communications between neurons, vascular cells, and microglia — which are immune cells operating in the brain — and their dysregulation during Alzheimer’s progression.
 
“That research generated massive data sets, to which I’ve applied my knowledge and skills in bioinformatics and computational biology to understand what the data tells us,” Sun explains. “Initially, my Whitehead Institute laboratory will continue to apply and develop new computational methods to systematically decipher the complexity of cell-cell communication in the brain  and their biological implications in cellular states, tissue organization, and disease genetics. Over time, I plan to develop, adapt, and apply novel deep learning methods to explore broader neuroimmune crosstalk between the central nervous and peripheral immune systems, as well as to study disease mechanisms by multilayered integration from genotype to phenotype.”
 
As the inaugural AI Fellow, she will also welcome opportunities to collaborate with other Whitehead Institute investigators — and the scientists and technicians in the Institute’s 10 Innovation Centers — to employ AI and other deep learning techniques in ways that advance studies on a broad range of questions.
 
“Whitehead’s culture supports interactions among many kinds of scientific expertise and perspectives,” Sun says, “which makes this new role particularly exciting for me.”